Octopus Solo, Actress-Horse Duet: Animal Presence in Contemporary Theatre
Dorota Semenowicz
dorota.semenowicz@e-at.edu.plThe Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0082-2114
Abstract
Una Chaudhuri, author of the pioneering article “‘There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake’: Toward an Ecological Theater” (1994), today explicitly calls for interspecies theatre, premised on acknowledging the materiality of non-human species and moving away from using nature as a metaphor. But what does this materiality mean in practice, and how to think about it in the context of animal presence on stage? The article attempts to suspend ethical essentialism, which precludes the participation of live animals in theatre and often only conceals a desire for moral purification, and to propose a rational framework for discussing the presence of non-human species on stage. The author focuses on the performance Hate: Un duo avec un cheval, directed by Laetitia Dosch (2018), in which she is joined by a horse. The piece is examined from the perspective of zooësis, a term proposed by Chaudhuri to cover the ways “the animal is put into discourse: constructed, represented, understood, and misunderstood”. The author of the article is interested in three issues: 1) the process of constructing the horse’s subjectivity and the concept of nature in the performance; 2) the relationship between the actress and the animal in the context of feminist ecology; 3) the production process of the performance. She also juxtaposes Hate with other examples in which animals appear on stage not as a symbol but as a real presence.
Keywords:
animal on stage, Laetitia Dosch, horse, Una Chaudhuri, zooësisReferences
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Authors
Dorota Semenowiczdorota.semenowicz@e-at.edu.pl
The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0082-2114
Dorota Semenowicz - Assistant professor at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art and representative of the director for international cooperation and development at the The Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre. Graduate of the University of Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle (bachelor's degree, master's degree). Curator of the Malta Festival Poznań from 2009 to 2023. Worked in the literature department of the National Theatre from 2009 to 2017. Her current research focuses on postcolonial strategies of French theatre and dance institutions and the work of Afro-European artists.
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